about that...

A couple weeks ago I read a blog post by Bruce Charlton about the value of daily blogging. He pointed towards the blog of Francis Berger, and applauded him for a successful four month run of blogging daily.

Sometimes all it takes to start a good habit is for one person to point out another person's success of maintaining that habit then saying 'so can you.'

Berger's blog is a tree that produces daily fruit. I pick from that tree and I enjoy the taste of the fruit. I too would like to have my own tree.

In many ways blogging is a distraction from the ongoing process of writing that elusive novel/la. Blogging is the mind exercise before the hard toil of creation. Blogging is picking the grapes. Writing is crushing them. And drinking the wine is like reading the book guys! I want to drink the wine, but I need to plant the trees first.

This blog is like me leasing the land to plant the trees guys! Get it?!

Like a good little inconsequential millennial I am focused on shaping my inconsequential opinion like a clay pot on a wheel. I can place the finished pot on my shelf, and begin to collect them. Someday I will fill them with wine. And then someday long after that I will share the wine. Until then I can share pictures of the pots.

More weird metaphors: To taste this delicious fruit, toil is demanded. To toil requires time. Writing takes up all the time in the world. Editing takes up more time than that. Therefore, for my own ideas to grow into tasty fruit I'd have to use my time wisely. No more frivolously wasting it on YouTube cringe compilations.

After only a week of avoiding the hysterical fake/social media complex did I notice myself thinking on my own. Before I'd regurgitate the "facts" to better remember them in a shallow impromptu debate-quiz with coworkers; now I'm finding there is no need to remember"facts" that may not even be true. The weight of these events are shaped by those selling them to me as such. There is so much more to learn.

And so I embarked on my own quest to taste the mystical fruit of fulfillment, and after only one week, as predicted, I fell off. My other blogs--the ones full of my day-to-day life's lessons--had required more intense reflection than usual. When there was no one left to listen, my mind, still dizzy from spinning around in circles, needed a place to vent.

I may not have been able to blog daily here, but I did manage to blog daily in my secret elsewhere.

That being said, for better or for worse this week will offer me more opportunity for writing than last week. There is no shortage of topics to write and time to write it. But the serpent of the post-Lenten season has reared its head, and I am unfortunately aware that my vices and my temptations are "available" again.

Christ sacrificed himself on a cross so that my sins would be forgiven.

I need to honor this great sacrifice.